Mackenzie Ford - The Clouds Beneath the Sun

She nodded.

“Max, my mother, and your father were in the front half.” Jack paused, lowered his voice still more. “They were either knocked unconscious or killed by the initial crash but the wings were attached to their part of the broken plane and that’s where the fuel is stored. The fuel caught fire and … and all three were burned.” He paused. “But, since they were either dead or unconscious, they wouldn’t have felt anything.”

Natalie was weeping again and Jack went out to get the doctor.

On the following day, Natalie woke up feeling just as weepy, just as ravaged, but ravenously hungry.

“That’s a better sign,” said the doctor to Jack, “a much better sign. It means a corner is being turned. Her body, if not yet her mind, is responding, recovering. Of course, it’s early days, given what she’s been through, but it’s a start. What’s her favorite food?”

Jack watched as Natalie was given some soup, two wings of chicken, and some rice pudding. For the first time, she sat up in bed.

When she had finished, she pushed the tray away from her but held on to her water. “Now,” she said in a croaky voice. “You were saying.”

Jack waited. He wouldn’t be rushed. He had to get his tone just right for what was coming.

“I was saying that Maxwell Sandys, my mother, and your father died in the plane crash in which Daniel and you survived.”

More tears.

First her mother, now her father. He had come to Africa because of her, and now he was dead. He was dead because of her, just as her mother … Natalie had hardly seen him since he had arrived. The trial had consumed her. Now …

Her memory of events was hazy but the weight on her chest, over her heart, confirmed what she couldn’t forget. Her lovely father, on his first trip to black Africa, on his way to the gorge, to explore the work of his daughter, to discuss with Eleanor his idea to bring to Kihara the world’s leading theologians, was … There had been no goodbye.

“Are there any remains at all?”

Jack looked away before looking back. “Cinders. Charred fragments. The remains of burned bones. I am having them collected.”

“Oh, Jack. This trial …”

“Shhh.”

“My father … Eleanor, they were getting on so well.”

He said nothing. Then, “You’re alive. You will recover—you are already recovering. If you had been …” He shook his head and swallowed hard.

Through more tears, Natalie managed to say, “And Daniel?”

“Is down the corridor. He had concussion like you—he hit his head badly; a few bruises and burns, but he’s already up and walking, giving interviews.”

Drinking some water, she almost spilled it. “Giving interviews! What do you mean? Interviews about what, and to whom?”

Jack wiped his eyes with his hand and nodded his head. “I haven’t told you the good news. You saved Daniel’s life. You’re a heroine. It’s all over the papers here. In the photos you remind me of Grace Kelly. Well, you would do if you had fair hair. Since you are too ill, too weak to be interviewed, they are interviewing him.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t understand because you don’t remember.” Jack laid some newspapers at the foot of the bed. “It’s all in here, when you’re ready. You were knocked unconscious by the plane. You crashed about three miles from a Maasai village. They saw what had happened and came to help straight away. But, since they had to travel on foot—to run, in the heat—it took them some forty minutes to reach the crash site, and there was a river in the way. But they could see what was happening all the time. Others ran to the nearest telephone, though of course we knew what had happened since Max had sent out an emergency Mayday call.”

He drank some water himself, and handed her more paper towels, to soak up the tears. He sat on the edge of the bed so he could wrap his arm around her shoulders.

“Anyway, the Maasai saw what happened. They saw you open the emergency door at the back of the plane—you must have been the first person to regain consciousness—and they saw you go back for Daniel and pull him, and shove him, and squeeze his frame out of that small aircraft. He’s not a Maasai himself, of course, but he’s black and that’s what counted with them—that you saved a black’s life. Apparently, you were trying to give him some water when a wing of the plane fell on both of you. You were knocked on the head and both of you were unconscious when the Maasai reached you. The rest of the plane was on fire by then, and the wing covering you and Daniel—there was airplane fuel everywhere. But the Maasai used boulders to get the wing off you and neither of you is badly burned. The flames kept the wild dogs away.”

“So the Maasai saved our lives?”

“Yes. After you had saved Daniel’s life, the Maasai saved yours. The papers are making a lot of that, as a symbol of the new Kenya.”

Natalie was weeping copiously again now, as grief for her father swept over her. “I’m sorry,” she said through her tears. “I’m acting like I’m the only one who’s lost someone. You and Christopher must be devastated.”

He grunted and shook his head. “You are the only one who’s been through a plane crash. Don’t worry about me—about us.” He squeezed his arm around her shoulders and then sat back in his chair.

Natalie lay for a while, sipping her water and not attempting to look at the newspapers.

Her father was dead. Dead. She was surrounded by a cold void. Now she was completely on her own.

Yes, she had saved Daniel’s life. She was glad of that. But, in a sense, it only evened up the score. He had kept her out of harm’s way with those leopards in the sausage tree. Dear Daniel. He was alive, alive to carry on what he was so good at, to become the good ancestor, whose name would be chosen to encourage future generations of Luo.

But her thoughts kept coming back to her father, her dead father.

Thank God Jack was here. He looked so vivid, so strong, so different from the way she felt. He had enough strength for both of them, at least for now, and thank God he hadn’t been piloting the plane. Her father was dead, a barren, colorless nothing, somewhere she couldn’t place or point to, but with Jack here she wasn’t all alone after all, she felt warmer when he was around. Why didn’t he look more wrecked? He had lost his mother and a good friend. Was he putting on an act for her benefit? She reached out her hand for his, the comfort of his firm flesh. She longed for her body to recover enough for physical contact. Once she stopped feeling so weepy she and Jack could … there must be somewhere between the burns and the bruises that he could touch her … Natalie closed her eyes. How could she think of that? Her father was dead.

“What I do remember, Jack, is that the two engines just stopped, in midair, one after the other.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Why … what would cause that?”

He waited. “The thing I always feared would happen actually did happen.”

They looked at each other.

Natalie’s waist hurt, her eyes were wet, her nose was gummy.

“You remember we parked the plane near those private jets at Nairobi International?”

She sniffed and nodded weakly.

“At lunchtime, after you’d given evidence in court, and the plan was for you and me to hurry back to Kihara, to get you out of harm’s way, I asked Christopher to fill up the Comanche, to save time, since we had to get to the strip before dark.” Jack wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “He was in a hurry, and was having his own flying lesson … he put the wrong fuel in the plane. Jet fuel, not Avgas.”